One image at a time

How innovative technology is helping primary care patients address their skin conditions

What happens when a patient with a suspicious skin growth cannot get an appointment to see a dermatologist? A new technology developed in Denmark is now providing ConferMED with a cutting-edge solution to this growing problem.

Access to dermatology care is limited in the United States, especially for patients on Medicaid and those living in medically underserved areas. Meanwhile, skin conditions including cancers are increasingly widespread and potentially deadly. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, rates of melanoma doubled between 1982 and 2011, and the number of cases continues to rise dramatically.

As a primary care physician, Dr. Daren Anderson has seen first-hand patients’ lack of access to dermatology care. In 2017, he led a research project at the Weitzman Institute that showed that only 13% of Medicaid patients at Community Health Center, Inc., who needed a dermatologist, actually saw a dermatologist. CHC is a federally qualified health center with over 100,000 patients throughout Connecticut.

Anderson is now the president and founder of ConferMED, a company that connects primary care providers with medical specialists to provide virtual, asynchronous case consultations. As a first step in addressing the dermatology gap, Anderson and his team built ConferMED’s network of dermatologists. They now employ 14 dermatologists from around the country.

Next, they developed a rudimentary process for capturing photo images of skin lesions. Primary care providers used point-and-shoot cameras or smart devices such iPhones and iPads and transmitted those images to the dermatologists through ConferMED’s secure platform.

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Anderson explained, “quality was not always what it needed to be for the dermatologist to make an accurate assessment.”

Enter Melatech.

A Danish company specializing in teledermatology technology, Melatech recently developed a state-of-the-art process to capture and transmit high-quality images for accurate diagnosis of skin lesions, growths, and rashes. Melatech’s process utilizes a modified iPhone with a sophisticated dermatoscopic lens and an app with built-in AI that assesses quality and guides the person behind the camera to capture clear, medically useable images and enter necessary clinical information. Melatech’s platform, Dermloop™, integrates education and training with the iPhone technology, making it easy for any primary care provider to learn and deploy the tool for use with their patients, wherever they may be.

In 2023, ConferMED began working with Melatech to customize Dermloop for use in the United States. They translated Danish to English and made a wide range of modifications to better suit the U.S. care delivery system.

In July 2024, ConferMED piloted the first U.S. version of Dermloop at Community Health Center. ConferMED trained a small team of “super users” who learned the technology in depth and then helped train their colleagues. Dermloop is easy and intuitive. Primary care providers across the health center quickly learned how to use it and began submitting dermatology consults with Dermloop. Today Dermloop is deployed at all of CHC’s primary care locations across the state and will soon be in use in schools, homeless shelters, and mobile healthcare units.

After the primary care provider submits the images to ConferMED, a dermatologist reviews them, along with the patient’s history, and gives the provider a report with likely diagnosis and treatment recommendations.

Anderson says that so far, in about 75% of cases, the primary care provider is able to implement the plan recommended by the dermatologist. The provider refers the remaining 25% of cases to a local dermatologist for in-person care. While access to a dermatology appointment may still be challenging, this process results in fewer requests overall for appointments.

“We know which cases to really fight for,” explained Anderson. “When we say we have a possible melanoma—the dermatologists in our networks will prioritize that.”

ConferMED and Melatech are now working to make Dermloop available at health centers across the U.S. The next implementation project, at a large clinic in Central Texas, is now underway.

In essence, Anderson and his colleagues have leveraged technology to connect people in new ways. They are making care delivery more efficient and effective while addressing a critical health care challenge, one state-of-the-art image at a time.

In the United States, Dermloop is available to primary care practices through ConferMED. For more information, please contact ConferMED by visiting this page.

Companies within the Moses/Weitzman Health System (MWHS) advance the delivery of primary and specialty care through practice, research, systems transformation, and training the next generation of health care leaders. This article features three separate groups within the system: Community Health Center, Inc., ConferMED, and the Weitzman Institute, the research arm of the MWHS.